Evaluating the recreation potential of the national park “Valdayskiy” (Novgorodskaya Oblast, Russia)

The National Park “Valdayskiy” (the Park) was established to preserve the unique lake-forest complex of the Valday upland and to create conditions for the development of organized recreation on this territory. Incomparable beautiful views of different landscapes attracthere thousands of tourists from various Russian regions.The greater number of them prefers lakeshores for camping,so special attention in the research was paid tothe studyofriparian and shallow water vegetation of lakesin zones with different recreation pressureto establish the patterns of vegetation digression.The materials of our observations are supplemented with data on the attendance of tourist sites collected by the Park staff.The region recreation capacities were studied on the base of bioclimatic indices (Bodman’s indices and subjective temperature).It was revealed that only for the period of 1 month (mid-July to mid-August), there is a massive influx of tourists and intensive use of recreation sites on the lakeshores.This leads to degradation of riparian forest and meadow vegetation; destruction of the protective (buffer) zone of aquatic vegetation, erosion of the banks near camps, pollution of shallow water by sewage and garbage. Thus, irregular recreation pressure on water bodies leads to local degradation of natural complexes and eventually to lowering the aesthetic value of riparian landscapes. But such factors as humid (moderate) continental climate with a prolonged cold winter and high relative air humidity throughout the year reduce the period of a strong recreation pressure, and the complicated accessibility of many lakeshores reduce the negative impact of recreation and delay the destruction of natural vegetation. Evaluation of the bioclimatic indices allows Valday to be attributed to regions with a lack of thermal resources, it is preferable to develop here dynamic types of recreation activities practically all over the year. For soft recreation activity the Valday upland are available with limitation from 7 to 8 months in a year and without limitation nearly 1 month in a year. For nature conservation in the Park it is necessary to organize monitoring of lakeshore’s complexes, control of recreation use, determine pressure of tourist traffic, normalizing and differentiating this pressure by the types of possible use and conservation regime.